Kathie Lee Gifford

ARTICLES ABOUT KATHIE LEE GIFFORD BY DATE - PAGE 4

She is not the first daytime talk-show host you'd like to see hang up the clip-on mike. Jerry Springer, Jenny Jones, Maury Povich, Ricki Lake - all of them are more powerful cultural toxins than the perpetually beleaguered Kathie Lee Gifford. Yet it is Kathie Lee who takes all the flak, Kathie Lee who, it is suggested, will be doing us all a favor by leaning over Reege's left thigh to coo in sympathy with a guest for the last time this Friday. It is Kathie Lee who is mocked for her Christmas specials, Kathie Lee who gets a bra and lurid suggestion tossed at her while she guest hosts for Letterman, Kathie Lee who, her legion of critics suggests, is one step removed from Patsy Ramsey in her stage-momming of son Cody and daughter Cassidy.

Kathie Lee Gifford, you're off the island. A poll to find out how audiences are relating to CBS's popular show "Survivor" asked viewers which celebrities would get kicked off the island first, if there were ever a celebrity show. "Survivor" puts men and women on an island for more than a month to see who survives the elements and each other. The island dwellers vote one participant off the island each week. In a telephone survey commissioned by TV Guide, audiences were posed with a fictional list of participants that included Gifford, talk show hosts Regis Philbin and Rosie O'Donnell, the cast of "Friends," professional wrestler The Rock and gonzo comic Tom Green.

It's taken her more than two years but Kathie Lee Gifford can finally write music about her husband's affair. "It was part of my healing," Gifford said recently while signing copies of the CD "Born For You." "And at this point, he was going to have to let me heal or he was going to have to find someplace else to live," she said. "And I think it was painful for him to realize how much pain he had caused me." Frank Gifford had an affair with a flight attendant in 1997. In March, Mrs. Gifford said sex helped her and her husband, a former sportscaster, recover from his affair.

Far be it from us to leak any details about next week's celebrity edition of ABC's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." So we'll leave it to Drew Carey: "I won." We'll let any remaining suspense linger regarding the show, which will feature other stars such as David Duchovny, Rosie O'Donnell, Queen Latifah, Dana Carvey, 'N Sync's Lance Bass, Ray Romano, TV chef Emeril Lagasse, Vanessa Williams and host Regis Philbin's good buddy Kathie Lee Gifford. But we'll allow Carey to add this much: "Only five people," he says, have won the amount of dough that he was able to walk away with.

Looking for some silly fun? Want a harmless way to take out your frustrations on a greed-obsessed society? Then we wager you'll have a smashin' time at Smash Regis, www.smashregis.com. "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire" game-show host Regis Philbin is center stage of this comical Web-based game. But it's Philbin who is need of a lifeline -- not his contestants -- because the game's object is to dump as many objects as you can on Philbin's animated body. Choose a missile ("weapons" include Hello Kitty, a bag of cash and Kathie Lee Gifford)

Celebrities are flocking to television's biggest hit, "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." At a promotional event in Torrance, Calif., last week, host Regis Philbin told the syndicated "Access Hollywood" that David Duchovny, Dana Carvey and Kathie Lee Gifford, co-host of Philbin's daytime talk show, have agreed to participate in celebrity editions of the game show airing in May. Ray Romano and Vanessa Williams also have signed on, and "Millionaire" is...

Inc. hears that after the city's big St. Patrick's Day Parade over the weekend, Mayor Daley privately predicted Al Gore would win Illinois in November's general election. The mayor based his optimism on the "suburbanites" along the parade route who enthusiastically cheered on the vice president. Inc. wonders how Daley could distinguish the suburbanites from the city dwellers? Oops Judging from all the people who contacted us to say Armour goofed, and that Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation" not "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" was the theme to NBC's "Freaks and Geeks," you'd think everybody watches the critically acclaimed show.

"To attach the word `women's' to a cultural product is to devalue it; in the view of the larger culture, `women's' is only a step above `young adult.' Though no one will admit it, the prevailing wisdom is that women are stupid and narcissistic and desire childish, mindless entertainment." -- Francine Prose, in a New York Times Magazine article looking at what she calls "the virulent cultural separatism currently generating a profusion of products and services created specifically for women" "When Miuccia needs an idea for a collection, she opens her closet."

Though most popularity polls in New York show Mayor Rudy Giuliani ahead of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in the race to become the state's next senator, Hill's getting a lot of support from Hollywood. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, members of the entertainment industry have shelled out $437,000 to Hillary's senatorial campaign. Among the donors are Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Barbra Streisand, Sean "Puffy" Combs, Tom Hanks, Michael Douglas, Cicely Tyson, Jimmy Buffett and Candice Bergen.

`As for now, the index is signaling further economic growth ahead.' -- Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board's research center, as the board reported that consumer confidence slipped in February from its record-setting January mark, suggesting rising interest rates and gas prices are taking their toll. KATHIE LEE GIFFORD, SURPRISING VIEWERS OF `LIVE WITH REGIS & KATHIE LEE' ON TUESDAY BY ANNOUNCING SHE'S LEAVING THE SHOW WHEN HER CONTRACT ENDS IN JULY: `It's the right time.